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On the Murder of Mindoro’s Nilo Baculo Sr.

In 2008, Mindoro journalist Nilo Baculo Sr. petitioned the courts for protection after learning of a plot to kill him from the hired gun contracted to carry out the hit.

On June 27 of that year, the Court of Appeals denied his petition for a writ of amparo, calling the reported threat “unsubstantiated.”

Reacting to the ruling, Baculo said: “Our justice system is rotten. You have to die first before you can prove” that a threat does exist.

Alas, six years later, Baculo’s words have proven sadly prophetic.

At noon of Monday, June 9, 2014, the 67-year old Baculo, who hosted the program “Isumbong Mo kay Ka Nilo” over radio station dwIM in Calapan City, was gunned down.

He was the 165th journalist murdered in the country, the 33rd under the watch of President Benigno Aquino III and the fourth this year.

Between a president who dismisses media killings because, to him, most victims are targeted “not because of professional activities, but, shall we say, other issues,” courts that, as Baculod sadly foretold, will believe lives are in danger only when those lives are actually lost, and security forces that, as a recent Human Rights Watch report and a number of other investigations into journalists’ murders have noted, are most likely involved, demanding, even hoping for, justice may seem to be an exercise in futility.
But we cannot give in to despair and cynicism.

We will continue to cry out for justice.

We will continue to call out Mr. Aquino, as we have called out the presidents before him, for their accountability in our colleagues’ deaths, not least of all because of their apathy.

We will never tire of pointing out that the State’s failure to protect its own citizens makes it accountable for each and every extrajudicial murder that makes a mockery of all claims to our being a democracy.

We will never tire of urging our colleagues and our people to join us in demanding accountability and justice.

For, more than apathetic or even complicit government, the other sure way to ensure that the impunity with which extrajudicial killings are committed will continue to thrive is indifference.